Tag Archives: Julia Cameron

With the entire world in various forms of quarantine, the past couple of months Wendy and I have uttered repeated prayers of gratitude that we actually enjoy being with one another at home. I’ve thought long and hard about what effect “sheltering-at-home” has meant both for those who live with a crazymaker and for those who may have finally had an excuse to escape a crazymaker for a time. This post, originally from April 23, 2013, has generated quite a bit of interest over the years. I thought now would be a good time to put it back out there again.

Over the years I have learned: Just as important as choosing good companions for the journey, it is equally important to avoid sharing life’s sojourn (even for a season) with “crazymakers.” Like the troublemaker in the proverb above, crazymakers plant seeds of strife wherever they go. They waste our time and suck us into the black hole of their neediness. They passive-aggressively pit people against one another and stir up dissension.

In her book, The Artist’s Way, Julie Cameron nails it with her description of crazymakers:

Crazymakers break deals and destroy schedules. They show up two days early for your wedding and expect you to wait on them hand and foot. They rent a cabin bigger than the one agreed upon and expect you to foot the bill.

Crazymakers expect special treatment. They suffer a wide panopoly of mysterious ailments that require care and attention whenever you have a deadline looming.

Crazymakers discount your reality. No matter how important your deadline or how critical your work trajectory at the moment, crazymakers will violate your needs.

Crazymakers spend your time and money. If they borrow your car they return it late with an empty tank.

Crazymakers triangulate those they deal with. Because they thrive on energy (your energy), they set people against one another in order to maintain their own power position dead center.

Crazymakers are expert blamers. Nothing that goes wrong is ever their fault.

Crazymakers create dramas – but seldom where they belong. Whatever matters to you becomes trivialized into mere backdrop for the crazymaker’s personal plight.

Crazymakers hate schedules – except their own. If you claim a certain block of time as your own, your crazy maker will find a way to fight you for that time, to mysteriously need things (you) just when you need to be alone and focused on the task at hand.

Crazymakers hate order. Chaos serves their purposes. When you establish space that serves you for a project, they will abruptly invade that space with a project of their own.

Crazymakers deny that they are crazymakers. “I’m not what’s making you crazy,” they will say, “It’s just that … [add something else to blame].”

I have found that the only path to increased levels of life, growth, and understanding is the one path that leads me directly away from a crazymaker.

About This Post

These chapter-a-day posts began in 2006. It’s a very simple concept. I endeavor each weekday to read one chapter from the Bible. I then blog about my thoughts, insights, and feelings about the content of that chapter. Everyone is welcome to share this post, like this post, or add your own thoughts in a comment. Thank you to those who have become faithful, regular or occasional readers along the journey along with your encouragement.

If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”Luke 11:13 (NIV)

One of the things I’ve learned in this chapter-a-day journey is that God’s Message never ceases to meet me right where I am.

One of the things that I’ve learned about myself along my spiritual journey is that I have a spiritual Achilles heel called scarcity. It’s a particular form of unbelief rooted in my own toxic shame. The following passage describes me well:

Remembering that God is my source, we are in the spiritual position of having an unlimited bank account. Most of us never consider how powerful the Creator really is. Instead, we draw very limited amounts of the power available to us. We decide how powerful God is for us. We unconsciously set a limit on how much God can give us or help us. We are stingy with ourselves. And if we receive a gift beyond our imagining, we often send it back.

One reason we are miserly with ourselves is scarcity thinking. We don’t want our luck to run out. We don’t want to overspend our spiritual abundance. Again, we are limiting our flow by anthropmorphizing God into a capricious parent figure. Remembering that God is our source, an energy flow that likes to extend itself, we become more able to tap our creative power more effectively.

from The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron

In today’s chapter, Jesus teaches His followers about prayer. He first gives them the words commonly known as “The Lord’s Prayer.” Then Jesus speaks to His followers about the attitude of prayer. He gets right to the heart of the scarcity thinking that Cameron describes.

Ask, seek and knock on God’s door with audacity, Jesus tells me. God is not a miserly Father to His children. God has an infinite and unlimited supply. The only limitation is my own lack of faith, my lack of trust that my Heavenly Father wants to bless me, and the cyclical loops of scarcity thinking that I allow my brain to keep playing on an infinite “repeat” mode in my head. That stinking pattern of poisonous thinking rears it’s ugly head over and over again in my head and heart.

Lord, have mercy on me.

In the quiet this morning I find myself, once again, reading exactly what I need to hear at this waypoint in my journey. Heavenly Father reminding me how limitless His love and resources are, and how limited I perceive them to be through the lenses of my shame.

Some days are a revelation just how far I still have to grow in my journey.

Have you missed the previous chapter-a-day posts from this journey through the Gospel of Luke? Click on this image and it will take you to a quick index of the other posts!

Over the years I have learned: Just as important as choosing good companions for the journey, it is equally important to avoid sharing life’s sojourn with “crazymakers.” Like the troublemaker in the proverb above, crazy makers plant seeds of strife wherever they go. They waste our time and suck us in to the black hole of their neediness. They passive aggressively pit people against one another and stir up dissension. In her book, The Artist’s Way, Julie Cameron nails it with her description of crazymakers:

Crazymakers break deals and destroy schedules. They show up two days early for your wedding and expect you to wait on them hand and foot. They rent a cabin bigger than the one agreed upon and expect you to foot the bill.

Crazymakers expect special treatment. They suffer a wide panopoly of mysterious ailments that require care and attention whenever you have a deadline looming.

Crazymakers discount your reality. No matter how important your deadline or how critical your work trajectory at the moment, crazymakers will violate your needs.

Crazymakers spend your time and money. If they borrow your car they return it late with an empty tank.

Crazymakers triangulate those they deal with. Because they thrive on energy (your energy), they set people against one another in order to maintain their own power position dead center.

Crazymakers are expert blamers. Nothing that goes wrong is ever their fault.

Crazymakers create dramas – but seldom where they belong. Whatever matters to you becomes trivialized into mere backdrop for the crazymaker’s personal plight.

Crazymakers hate schedules – except their own. If you claim a certain block of time as your own, your crazy maker will find a way to fight you for that time, to mysteriously need things (you) just when you need to be alone and focused on the task at hand.

Crazymakers hate order. Chaos serves their purposes. When you establish space that serves you for a project, they will abruptly invade that space with a project of their own.

Crazymakers deny that they are crazymakers. “I’m not what’s making you crazy,” they will say, “It’s just that … [add something else to blame].”

I have found that the path to increased levels of life, growth and understanding is often the one path that leads us directly away from a crazymaker.

Like this:

But the People of Israel were feeling sorry for Benjamin, their brothers. Judges 21:6 (MSG)

In her book, The Artist's Way, Julie Cameron talks about people who can be labeled "crazymakers" and their destructive effect on people around them. Crazymakers are individuals who, by their own self-centered actions, wreak havoc on the lives and family system. She describes them:

Crazymakers are those personalities that create storm centers. They are often charismatic, frequently charming, highly inventive, and powerfully persuasive. And, for the creative person in their vicinity, they are enormously destructive. You know the type: charismatic but out of control, long onproblems and short on solutions. Crazymakers are the kind of people who can take over your whole life.

I thought of this description of crazymakers as I read the insanity of the events described in today's chapter. I would suggest that crazymakers can exist on a national level as well as a personal level. The tribes of Israel ostracize the tribe of Benjamin for the shameless act of rape and murder carried out against a woman of Bethlehem a few chapters ago. Then, the whole nation starts feeling sorry for the folks of Benjamin as they turn their scorn on the tribe of Jabesh Gilead for not showing up to the national riots. They turn their anger on that tribe and commit bloody atrocities. By the end of the chapter, they are justifying the kidnapping of foreign women for the men of Benjamin to marry (wait a minute, wasn't this whole calamity started by the men of Benjamin forcibly taking a woman and raping her?!).

As I scratch my head, I'm reminded of how crazy things can get when we walk away from God's path. When, as the end of the chapter describes, people do whatever they feel like doing, then craziness is not far behind.